When illusions are shattered by truth, talent is set free.

She entered a state where prayer and poetry became one and the everyday world seemed full of holiness and significance.

But just as the river is always at the door, so is the world always outside. And it is in the world that we have to live.

How was it possible for the world to be so beautiful and so cruel at the same time?

...What does the blessing of heaven mean? We know the kirin is just an animal, not a mythical creature." It has become a symbol now.... That is the way human beings deal with the world.

..while I was happy enough to pray to any god, knowing that they were simply different faces created by men, of one indivisible truth.

Don't you know the man whose life you spare will always hate you?

I miss the days when I was alone with my characters and no one else knew them except me.

Death comes suddenly and life is fragile and brief. No one can alter this either by prayers or spells.

The less people think of you, the more they will reveal to you or in your presence.

It's like a spell. It's so strong I can't fight it. Is love always like this?

Kid's books should be just as good as any other books. No. They should be held to a *higher* standard than other literature for the same reason that we take extra care with children's food.

Better my right hand should have been cut off. Go know I was setting in motion events that would lead to the ruin of one of the few truly good men I ever met.

Expectations are dangerous when they are both too high and unformed.

A city is not an accident but the result of coherent visions and aims.

Don't ever forget that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world, it's the only thing that ever has.

I think extremists within the base may very well move the Democratic party away from its pro-Israel position.

My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that's the right song to not fight the lyric.

You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God

I never thought when I was a kid that I would become an adult. I never thought of myself as having any sort of distant horizon. I have sort of leapt without a master plan.

I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.